22-25 July 2017
Heather had missed her originally scheduled flight back to Phoenix with our water pump delays. Now we were going to fly back together in a few days, which meant that we had a limited amount of time to prep the boat for our absence. We were in a good spot to ride out hurricane season, but still needed to be prepared for the worst.
I removed the radar reflector and the solar panels. We put on all the dock lines and kept adjusting them for days until the boat was in a nice cradle of lines. The fenders were positioned until all the hot spots were covered. The docks are floating, and they need to be, because the tides are about 8 feet here.
The marina seemed most concerned about the foresails unwinding in the wind. That seemed to be the most common problem, and if the wind was strong enough to unwind the sail on its own it was too strong to do much about it other than cut the sail down. Since I hadn't ever taken down a furling sail I snugged up and locked down the furling lines and tied off the drum for a little added insurance.
Down below we organized and cleaned and packed. We were just planning on being gone for a few weeks but this was only our second hurricane season and we were in a new place. We closed all the through hulls (holes in the boat) except the air conditioner coolant one, which we left on to dehumidify the boat. Because it was humid and hot. I took five steps out of the air conditioning and I'm already soaked hot and humid. Without AC on we were afraid we would come back to the boat and it would be a ball of mold below.
Because we wanted the AC to stay on we needed power, so the plugs and the cable were tied down and supported to keep them from pulling out if the weather got rough. Before we knew it time was up and we needed to go.
sv-hiatus.blogspot.com
The adventures of Dan and Heather as they travel on their sailboat, "Hiatus".
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